Embracing the Ordinary

As the Buddhists put it, we are all unaware Buddhas whose efforts to lift ourselves out of the ordinary hide our true nature from ourselves. The Buddhists echo Eckhart’s point in the declaration that nirvana is samsara – the highest achievement of the spiritual life is within the full embrace of the ordinary. Like our striving elsewhere, attachment to a discipline is but our desire for the extraordinary. Our appetite for the big experience – sudden insight, dazzling vision, heart-stopping ecstasy – is what hides the true way from us. Therefore, we need a discipline that undoes our attachment to a discipline. Thus the famous sutra, “If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him.”

But, of course, we first need the Buddha to teach us this, to teach us that we are already there, on a road of our own.

James P. Carse: Breakfast at the Victory